Marijuana, Menopause, and Me

1795, engraving, Jacob Sturm

The gummy cubes are tiny, about half the size of a standard sugar cube and pleasingly packaged in an adorable tin. The accompanying literature suggests I drop them in tea, coffee, or cocktails. Just like sugar cubes. They’re flavored, “like those hot cinnamon candies,” say the people who claim to love me. They taste like stinky boy.

Thank god someone said, “Mom, you should start with half and wait a while.”

My experiment was based on hope and research. Using cannabis to ease menopausal symptoms is nothing new. Many of my friends and family use marijuana, either recreationally or medicinally; evidence suggests that weed can greatly relieve some of the worst bits of midlife. After suffering most of the storied meno misery for years, I’ve been tempted by positive reports from friends and promising research blooming in the press. I default to the glass of pinot, but as Dana Goodyear writes in the New Yorker, “everyone knows that alcohol is bad for you (kills your stem cells, gives you cancer, makes you grouchy, paunchy, gray), whereas, increasingly, the industry is equating conscious marijuana use with sublime good health.”

I’m all in.

I’ve considered vaping, à la Helen in The Affair, and have imagined myself in the bath, languidly smoking a joint and singing, like Diane Keaton in Shoot the Moon. I’ve seen the targeted marketing — happy white ladies (always white ladies) enjoying their edibles as some sort of goddess-given right, a path to healing and enlightenment. After decades of relative sobriety, I decided that it’s my turn. Perhaps a midlife high is just what’s needed to untie the knots and calm the demons.

What could go wrong?

I have a glancing history with pot, an old acquaintance forgotten on the high seas of adulthood. I smoked socially and sporadically through my teens and early twenties and had one or two unsavory experiences with brownies. My last experience, decades ago, turned into an ordeal. I was my own eyeballs, if that makes any sense, and it only went downhill from there. Then I spent years birthing and nursing babies and more years trying to keep them all alive. That glass of pinot became my medicine of choice, while everyone around me lit up.

Now I’m old. The kids are getting old, navigating their own tendencies toward self-medication. My joints hurt, my emotions are wonky, and sleep doesn’t always come easy. The ugly racial disparity in the law’s approach to marijuana is not lost on me, a white lady. I believe that medical and recreational marijuana should be legal everywhere, for everyone, and I also believe that the legal tools we use to tame the wild beasts (e.g., alcohol, nicotine, opioids, and other prescription drugs) are worse for us. But I have much to learn.

Cannabidiol (CBD) and tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) are the two most prominent cannabinoids found in Cannabis, the plant genus that includes both hemp and marijuana. CBD provides what Goodyear calls “a ‘body high’ that doesn’t affect cognition,” while THC is “the principal psychoactive constituent of cannabis.” Think pain-free productivity versus pink elephants. The people who claim to love me have suggested I try CBD oil or edibles in an effort to calm the fires of midlife, but these same people gave me tiny, cinnamon, stinky-boy THC cubes.

And we were off, pink elephants on parade.

It helps here to know something about me and my sensitive ways. My husband calls me the “canary in the coal mine,” after the poor birds miners carried, confident that the delicate creatures would fall quickly if conditions were dangerous. We are early indicators of potential danger, the birds and I. On the night in question — the half-cube night — my husband said, “I can’t believe you feel anything at all. You ate so little.” He said this, as I — a canary with pinwheel eyes, hyena laugh, and a creeping, not-entirely-unpleasant-but-marginally-troubling unhinging — watched incredulous from the bed.

I felt drunk but not sloppy, wildly happy but definitely anxious, totally myself and completely misunderstood. I had an unquenchable thirst and a mouth like a desert. It seemed a sort of fug had wrapped itself around me and filled my bedroom. (Yes, a fug, not a fog — it’s sort of a fucked fog.) I somehow sustained a long online conversation with a friend and sent a professional email to a stranger. I put stuff in my Amazon cart. I yelled inappropriate things and grinned conspiratorially to myself. I drank what seemed like gallons of water. I wobbled to the bathroom, afraid to be seen, wondering if I even could be seen with my blurry edges. I burst into manic gales of laughter whenever I was seen. Uncontrollable, inexplicable laughter. I felt sort of mad — not angry, just deranged.

My husband took one look at me.

“Oh boy. More like the canary near a coal mine. She’s down!”

This went on. For hours. The pinwheel, the laughter, the bliss/panic cycle. I couldn’t sleep. I felt a little crazy. My joints may have felt better, but I don’t remember. I was busy worrying about death. And madness. Teeth. I was entirely too aware of my tongue. Somewhere in the wee hours, I decided that my house was on track to become the next Grey Gardens, and I was Edie bound. I shudder to think what a full cube would do to me.

911, what’s the nature of your emergency?

The upshot: I didn’t like it and I couldn’t wait for it to go away.

I am, it seems, not a candidate for THC. The next day, I felt muted and tired, like I was laboring under a blanket. Not altogether bad, but weird — like a canary near a bad mine. I felt as though I had been through something. I look at all the people in my life who use cannabis for all manner of things and can’t imagine how they ever get anything done.

They tell me I’m sensitive, and I am. They say it’s different for others, and I’m sure it is. But it doesn’t seem fair. I’d like to pull a vape pen out of my purse and tame the dragon occasionally. I’d like to drop a gummy after dinner and slide into that sweet evening. Why must I be a canary?

I’m not done. CBD is next. In a tantalizing passage in Bon Appetit, Aliza Abarbanel writes, “dozens of studies have found evidence that CBD can treat epilepsy, act as a therapy for schizophrenia, and alleviate joint pain, among other illnesses.” That “other illnesses” bit is intriguing. The people who claim to love me also claim to have access to CBD oils and treats, though now that it’s mostly legal in my state I don’t need the shady sources. There’s something of value in there, I’m convinced — even for a canary like me. And I want it now.

🌞 Lisa

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Things to share:

• Jacqueline Dooley
  reminding me of the dark side of cannabis. A little afraid for all of us now.

• I read the magnificent Hold Still by Sally Mann and what to say? A gorgeous, glorious account of an artist and her art, a woman and her family. I loved it in all its complicated beauty.

• I also loved Sandwich by

  Catherine Newman
  . I saw my messy middle-aged mama self on every page. Very funny, wise, and a bit of an attack (lol).